Blog Post

Journey from an IT Engineer to an Entrepreneur

This is a cliché topic for my journal and story of most budding entrepreneurs of India but it has some Lemons in it with Lemonade in the End (Actually the Beginning).

It all started on 10th August 15’ with a cohort of 15 Young & Aspiring Entrepreneurs whom I met for the 1st time but shared the same zeal/passion/energy to disrupt and challenge the startup world with the modular approach of Experiential Entrepreneurship & Innovation. First of first, we came to know ourselves and what we want to become through self & phycology. Sessions on self-awareness and spirituality by Dr. Prabodh Yelne helped us in sharpening the entrepreneurial goals.

I have never been to any institute where the classroom was called a playground and which was equipped with Bean Bags, Gulli cricket, sleep and Gupshup. Learning has always been fun but Real Life Entrepreneurs at Lemon School of Entrepreneurship just made them better. Mentors and peer group had so much expertise and belonged to various domains that every session with them was a fun. Modular approach of ‘Hands-on-Experience’ and ‘Sessions with mentors’ was the main learning, for Quais Hussain as he said “We gained the lot from the experiences of our mentors who gave real life insights and current trends” like Dr. Rajeev Roy sir, Vikas Rajput sir, Sanjay Arora sir and more were really great. It’s letting of the stiffness and being comfortable in the atmosphere which definitely augments the learning process.

Hacks & tricks of Entrepreneurship was learned from ‘Learning through reflection’ and ‘Schedule Agility’ and many outdoor ‘team Building’ programs. “Learning from failures” says Preetam Dhengle was/Is/will be the biggest learning for us throughout our Entrepreneurial Journey. It was passion that was driving us and on parallel front we all were working on our own startup Ideas. ‘Projects’ and ‘Case studies’ were the integral part of our day and for the cherry on the top we regularly had sessions and O3 (One on One) mentoring with Established Entrepreneurs from U.S.A., London, Australia, Delhi, Bengaluru and many more. This is the 1st of its kind institute where there are No Exams & No Marks, just pure Self-Learning without any Degree. The Institute where your growth is measured by number of experiments and failures you have encountered.

Lemon School of Entrepreneurship preaches the philosophy of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) which is hard to learn as being accustomed to Indian Education System. It took couple of ‘Lemon Projects’ to understand this pedagogy which helped us in understanding the ‘Consumer Behavior’. Entrepreneurship has different forms and each wave is more challenging than other when you try to conquer them. One of which is ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ whose exposure made all of us realize the need of Entrepreneurship in India and social areas where all can work upon after the Interaction with Ramon Magsaysay award 2015 winner Mr. Anshu Gupta.

Industrial exposures like SpaceWood, Panino’s and GlobalLogic were fun as it is a day out from our otherwise busy schedule. Another best part of Entrepreneurial journey was an adventure Camp near Ramtek which turned out to be the 1st Ice-breaking session for all of us with mentors and peer group. We also had an Ideation camp in the jungle of Pench where 390 startups Ideas were funneled down to 56 in span of 2 Days of time. What Aksh Purohit, a young Entrepreneur at LSE liked the most is the ‘Style of Ideation’ which was away from city and helped in focusing and new ideas. Mentors such as Deepak Menaria, Sourav Mukerji, Mukesh Ashar, Love Bhatnagar and many more worked on our Ideas and validated in Real Time scenario.

No one had imagined that Startup journey would be so Fun & learning but this unique approach made us all Street smart and Innovative thinkers. After 715 hours of Entrepreneurship Education, Research, Pilot & Mentoring, we all are here coming up with our own start-ups. Many of us have traveled across various cities in India for the Pilot & Validation, some of them have used the power of Internet and some have trial & tested their product on streets and joined hands as co-founders but everyone has come out with start-up.

My dear friends and readers, THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING for start-ups at Lemon School of Entrepreneurship and we all need your well wishes so that we remain to be the JOB CREATORS rather than the JOB SEEKERS. This is our LEMONADE and this will be our religion for the Life.